"No economic activity was more
irrepressible (in the 14th century) than the investment and lending
at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western Capitalist
economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of
Usury."

Barbara Tuchman

A Distant Mirror

"With usura hath no man a
house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well
fitting

that design might cover their
face,....

with usura, sin against nature,

is thy bread ever more of stale
rags

is thy bread dry as paper,....

Ezra Pound (Cantos,XLV)

"Whatever ye put out at usury
to increase it with the substance of others shall have no increase from God; but
whatever ye shall give in alms, as seeking the face of God, shall be doubled to
you."

The Koran

"The Church forbade Usury, but
it did not forbid bankers to be generous toward depositors and to pay them a
return on their deposits "as a free gift."Such deposits were called depositi
a discrezione because they yielded a return payable at the discretion of the
banker."

Raymond De Roover

San Bernardino of Siena &
Saint Antonio of Florence

"Much of the antagonism to
interest is in reality a disapproval, not of interest as a form of income, but
of that distribution of property which makes so great a part of the interest
income of the community flow into the pockets of some few privileged
individuals."

-Gustav Cartel (1866-1945)

The Nature and Necessity of
Interest (1903)

"We have head it said that
five per cent is the natural interest of money."

-Thomas Babington Macaulay
(1800-59)

Literary Essays Contributed to
the Edinburgh Review

"Nothing is esteemed a more
certain sign of the flourishing condition of any nation than the lowness of
interest."

-David Hume (1711-76)

Essays of Interest

"To preserve our independence,
we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our
election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."

-Thomas Jefferson

"It is monstrous and unnatural
that an unfruitful thing should bear, that a thing specifically sterile, such as
money, should bear fruit and multiply of itself."

-Nicholas Oresme (1320-82)

The Origin, Nature, Law and
Alterations of Money

"Our modern expedient, which
has become very general, is to mortgage the public revenues, and to trust that
posterity will pay off the encumbrances contracted by their ancestors."

-David Hume (1711-76

Essays of Public Credit

"The only part of the
so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions
of modern peoples is the National Debt."

-Karl Marx

Capital

"The modern theory of the
perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood."

Thomas Jefferson (1816)

"No nation ought to be without
a debt. A national debt is a national bond."

-Thomas Paine

Common Sense

Americans charge more than $300
billion on their credit cards each year, and pay about $35 billion in interest
on those loans.

"The American dollar has no
intrinsic value. It is a classic example of fiat money with no limit to the
quantity that can be produced. Its primary value lies in the willingness of
people to accept it and, to that end, legal tender laws require them to do so.
It is true that our money is created out of nothing, but it is more accurate to
say that is based upon debt. In one sense, therefore, our money is created out
of less than nothing. The entire money supply would vanish into bank
vaults and computer chips if all debts were repaid. Under the present System,
therefore, our leaders cannot allow a serious reduction in either the national
or consumer debt. Charging interest on pretended loans is usury, and that
has become institutionalized under the Federal Reserve System. The Mandrake
Mechanism by which the Fed converts debt into money may seem complicated at
first, but it is simple if one remembers that the process is not intended to be
logical but to confuse and deceive. The end product of the Mechanism is
artificial expansion of the money supply, which is the root cause of the hidden
tax called inflation. This expansion leads to contraction and, together, they
produce the destructive boom-bust cycle that has plagued mankind throughout
history wherever fiat money has existed."

G. Edward Griffin

The Creature from Jekyll Island….a
second look at the Federal Reserve

"Centuries ago, usury
was defined as any interest charged for a loan. Modern usage has redefined it as
excessive interest. Certainly, any amount of interest charged for a
pretended loan is excessive. The dictionary, therefore, needs a new
definition. Usury: the charging of any interest on a loan of fiat
money."

Ibid

"When looking at
the debtor nations of the Third Word we must not, however, ignore the fact that
the USA, the supreme leader of the world system has herself now become a debtor
nation of the first order."

Elmar Altvater/Kurt Hubner

The Poverty of Nations

"In terms of its significance,
the US debt mountain should be viewed from two angles. On the one hand, the
question arises as to whether, as is often asserted, the USA's net indebtedness
signals her ultimate demise as a world power. It is too early to assess the
long-term effects, but what is certain, although many of those who control
wealth overseas have failed to consider it, is that since the USA's debts have
been extended in the lenders' own currencies, repayment could be effected part
through devaluing the dollar. The wealthy overseas are now finding themselves in
the unfortunate position of being able to see the value of their costly US
treasury bonds, expressed in their own currencies, dwindling. In this way they
are de facto subsidizing the US budget deficit.

Another aspect of the
situation is the effect which the US debt is having on international
indebtedness as a whole. The USA is now absorbing an increasingly large
proportion of the savings available internationally for herself, and this is
restricting dramatically the number of new loans which it is possible to extend
to the Third World. In addition, the USA is finding herself with less and
less room for maneuver in her role as the nation responsible for the
international management of the crisis. The strategies provided for by the Baker
Plan, which depend on growth and new loans to the Third World, should actually
take place with the financial participation of the USA. Yet that situation
cannot be allowed to arise, since no other country is prepared to take on the
(unpleasant) task of taking overall charge of coordinating the crisis at
international level. The the USA's rapidly increasing external debt is beginning
to pose a threat to international financial stability. What this suggests is
that the only way out of the dilemma may be for lenders to start annulling
debts."

Claudia Dziobek

The Role of the USA in the
International Debt Crisis

"The last conflict is at hand
in which Civilization receives its conclusive form-the conflict between money
and blood."

Oswald Spengler

"Beware!, The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred
years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul
is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precautions
must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the
tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."

Lord Keynes (1937)

"Since it was established 200 years ago, there have seven
periods in our history in which the national debt more or les steadily
increased, six when it declined, and three when it was stable. Of the seven
periods of increase, six were marked by either a major war or a depression. That
is why the seventh period, the period since 1960, stands out in such stark
contrast. For in the last thirty-six years we have had no more than ordinary
fluctuations in the business cycle, and the Vietnam War was, at least relative
to the size of the American economy if in no other way, a small war. Yet in this
period we increased the size of the national debt by a factor of seventeen.

And for what? What have we saved-or gained-in exchange for
imposing upon the future, generation after generation, interest costs of well
over $1000 per person, per year? The answer, I'm afraid, is little more
than the political self-interests of a few thousand people, Democrats and
Republicans alike, who held public office during this period. They were able,
through a happenstantial confluence of economic theory and history, to use the
national debt as a means of avoiding tough decisions-which are by definition
unpopular with many. Resorting to increases in the debt rather than making those
decisions was a short-term avoidance of political pain that will have long-term
consequences that may well be much more painful, just as the excessive use of
alcohol has short-and long-term consequences that are sharply at odds with each
other."

John Steel Gordon

Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt

"According to international figures published in July 1989, the
Third World's total debt burden was conservatively estimated to be in the
vicinity of 10 trillion U.S. dollars. This is a meaningless figure unless it can
be compared to something we can understand. If a million dollars is compared to
seconds ticking away on your watch, then it is equivalent to ten months, while a
billion is equivalent to thirty years. The Third-World debt burden, then, is
equivalent to three hundred thousand years.

Some portion of this gargantuan debt burden is owed to such
institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are
financially supported by the industrialized nations. Likewise, the larger
portion of this staggering paper debt economy is owed to transactional
profit-taking interests (banks,etc.) of the developed nations. As Mr. Osterberg
says, in order even to begin to repay portions of the interest on the debt, the
developing countries are ruthlessly forced to exploit natural and human
resources.

It has long been clear to informed economic analysts that it
will be impossible for the developing countries ever to honor their debts-they
often cannot even pay the staggering interest, much less settle the principal.
The debt-loaning megasystem has temporarily solved this problem via the
transaction economy by rolling over the loans into new ones, to which even more
interest is added. Not having the money they need to service the principal of
the loans, the developing countries have to pay interest equivalent to approximately
$25 million per day to the loan sources in the industrialized nations.
This is exploitation the degree of which far surpasses that which took place
during the time of colonial empires.

Since there is no other aspect of the world economy that
compares to this $1,250 billion debt hallmark (which is increasing
daily), it is this aspect that figuratively is the world economy. This enormous
debt will never be repaid, for there is not enough development or enough
resources on earth to repay it. Mr. Osterberg (Corporate Renaissance:
Business as an Adventure in Human Development-by Rolf Osterberg points out
that the right thing to do would be immediately to write off these loans and
fully accept the consequences.

But he continues, that cannot be done. The loans represent a
large part of the total balance sheets of so many banks that if the write-off
were done it would result in a breakdown of the industr8ialized world's banking
systems-and, as a consequence, a breakdown of the world economy. Accordingly,
banks and lending institutions continue to list these debs on balance sheets as assets,
which are now nothing more than just so much debt-economy empty air.

Since the total world's debt economy now far exceeds the world's
real resource economy, the vicious-circle of production-consumption (economic
growth) of resources can never be used to bring the world's debt economy back
into stability. The only remaining bailout source which will naturally be
cannibalized in attempts to bring the debt economy somewhat stable.

The taxpaying economy can be as vital as are the taxpayers
willing to "contribute" to it. Thus, this solution might be feasible
if profit-taking exploiters were not moving the labor needs of their enterprises
into the Third World nations, where labor is cheaper than in the developed
nations-naturally increasing unemployment in the developed nations-naturally
increasing unemployment in the developed nations. At a certain point, then, the
tax-paying economy will fail as the final resource for sustaining the world's
debt economy. And at that time, the world's debt economy will collapse."

Ingo Swann

Your Nostradamus Factor

*****************************************

Book: "Hot Money and the Politics of Debt" 3rd Edition by R.T.
Naylor

Book: "Proclaim Jubilee! A Spirituality for the Twenty-First
Century" by Maria Harris